Verifying Advertisers on Facebook & Instagram
Over the past few months, people have asked me about Facebook’s advertiser verification process: who we verify, how we do it, and where we’ll go next.
First, let’s start with what Facebook already does. We require a wide swath of people and businesses to go through some sort of verification. That includes political advertisers in 95 countries and territories, or Pages with either large followings in the US and Pages we think are trying to mislead people. For example, in October 2019 we announced that Pages concealing their ownership in order to mislead people would be required to successfully complete the verification process and show more information in order for the Page to stay up.
The examples above are not exhaustive, but they’re a good cross-section of the types of people/organizations we verify. In some cases we verify a person’s identity. In other cases we verify a business or organization. For political or issue ads, we do both (+ location!). This verification often includes location beyond simple (spoofable) geoIP. For example, in 2018 we started verifying location in the US by sending a letter in the mail (that includes a unique code) to a person’s mailing address in addition to verifying an individual’s location using online signals.
In the Facebook Ad Library, we are transparent about all active ads running for all FB Pages and IG Profiles globally. And, for ads about social issues, elections or politics, we go a step further. We maintain copies of the ad creatives for 7 years as well as performance information such as ranges of how much was spent and how many impressions delivered. The combination of authenticity and transparency allows us to shine a light on these ads and promote accountability.
On verification, we’ve learnt a lot from adding these steps to the process — including where advertisers get hung up and frustrated having to go through extra steps. When it comes to where we go next, we’re taking a considered approach. The last thing we want is to add even more burden to small businesses (SMBs) at a time when they’re already overwhelmed. We’re exploring a variety of verification mechanisms. None of these are perfect, and I’m always interested to hear feedback from those in the community.
Some are well-known mechanisms like domain/dns, geoIP, phone verification, 2FAC, out of wallet questions, address verification etc. Some have spotty coverage/reliability outside of US, Canada, UK/Europe. We know that one cannot consistently rely on verifying business entities or their assets, as (1) not all small businesses have formal structures or registrations, (2) third-party business databases are hugely variable in quality and coverage…(3) regulators or local licensing authorities are often not verifying information themselves and (4) when businesses or entities are easy to create, individuals can hide behind them.
We agree with others in the industry that executing on this shift will take years, and there may be other country/vertical combinations where we try these first.
An important piece of the puzzle is vendors. Every platform uses them for verifying business- and personal ID information, and while we work with some great ones, we need more in local markets and higher precision. In some countries these vendors simply don’t exist, and we need to have global solutions.
Thinking about global solutions that will take several years to develop, I agree it will require a mix of multiple mechanisms including “Personal identification methods, Business incorporation documents, items to verify who they are” and “geography”.
Even with a lack of vendors in some countries and no global standard on what platforms should require from businesses, we aren’t waiting and will continue to test new use cases for verification. BTW: outside of verification, we’re committed to creating real world consequences for bad actors. It’s why we recently took legal action to protect people on our platform from those trying to run deceptive ads.
We’re supportive of more verification for advertisers.
There is no quick or easy solution. Some of this may be done by (the majority of, who are) well-intentioned businesses opting-in to confirm more information to distinguish themselves from others. Long-term, being effective here will require platforms, businesses, regulators and policymakers working together to set clear requirements and share best practices. If you work in the ads world, are an identity vendor or looking to start a company in this space to innovate in this area, feel free to chime in in the comments or send me a message on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter.
